The semi-finalists of the "You're in the Game" contest have become known

The acceptance of applications for participation in the VI season of the "You're in the Game" contest has ended: on April 14, the names of 250 semi-finalists from 62 regions of Russia were announced. All of them will take part in a large-scale educational accelerator.

The "You're in the Game" competition is held annually under the state program "Sport of Russia" with the support of the Ministry of Sports. His main task is to find and help grow vibrant sports projects aimed at involving people in physical education and sports.

The result of accepting applications for the current season is impressive. The participants presented 6,133 projects from all over the country, which are already changing the attitude of Russians towards sports, making it closer and clearer.

The organizers of the competition received the most applications from Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Republic of Tatarstan. The largest number of projects were received in the categories "Starting Point", "Scale", "Children in Sports" and "Limitless opportunities".

One of the semi-finalists in the "Children in Sports" nomination was the international Internet campaign "Obedient Ball", which originated in 2019 in the city of Kulebaki, Nizhny Novgorod region. The participants strive to score the ball as many times as possible, and the leaders who manage to make more than a hundred hits per minute are members of the Obedient Ball 100 club. The project was twice, in 2024 and 2025, recognized by the Russian Football Union as one of the best initiatives for children and grassroots football. This is not just a flash mob, but a philosophy that unites generations and cultures through a common love of the game.

The Limitless Movement project is an adaptive roller sports and ski training for children with cerebral palsy and ASD. The authors from the Voronezh Region presented an initiative in the "Unlimited Possibilities" nomination. The project covers dozens of families not only in their region, but also in Lipetsk, Orel, Bryansk, Moscow and the Moscow region. The training method allows you to combine sports with rehabilitation, adapting the load for each child, and the project itself offers participants a continuous trajectory of development — from the first classes to competitions.

The Football in the village of Lovozero 2.0 project by coach Janis Shebut from the Murmansk Region has been developing football in a small Sami village beyond the Arctic Circle with a population of only 2,000 people for 15 years in the "Starting Point" nomination. The number of young football players has grown from 3 to 110 children during this time. The coach uses his own funds, attracting sponsors whenever possible, takes the children to competitions and training camps, buys prizes and equipment. An important part of the project is the charity event "Football Robingoods", in which part of the equipment is transferred to boarding schools and remote villages.

The Russian Trail Fair from the Ivanovo Region (Scale nomination) is the first and only ultra-trail in the region. The two-day event takes place in the small town of Gavrilov Posad and includes 13 distances from 600 m to 110 km. Trails are accompanied by folk workshops, lectures and a concert program in the atmosphere of Russian traditions and rural summer, organically combining running and the local cultural code.

Among the outstanding semi—finalists of AkratoPRIME from the Kirov region is a CRM system for managing sports schools as a business, presented in the "Transformation in Sports" nomination. The platform integrates processes from the first contact with the client to the calculation of coaches' salaries, and access to the system can be provided to both managers and employees, as well as parents of young athletes. To date, 200 sports schools from 52 regions of Russia have been connected to AkratoPRIME, and in the future it is planned to connect at least every second sports school in the country.

"The semi-finalists of the You're In the Game contest show with their ideas how dynamically mass sports are developing in Russia today. Reaching the semi-finals for the participants means that their project has already taken place and has gained the trust of the professional community. In addition, this is a serious challenge for the authors of the initiatives themselves and for the regions they represent. The "You're in the Game" contest helps people who create conditions for sports locally to gain support, and their projects to gain sustainable development in the future," said Svetlana Zhurova, expert of the competition, Olympic champion, deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation of the eighth convocation, First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs.

The authors of these and other projects of the "You're in the Game" contest will receive a three-week educational accelerator. As part of the program, which was developed by the Russian International Olympic University, experts will discuss key topics with participants: from finding partners and legal aspects to working with grants and digital promotion. Separate lectures will be devoted to the creation of presentations, communication with authorities, and the development of digital projects.

The program will end with a strategic session where project authors will be able to prepare commercial proposals for potential sponsors. Participation in the event will give the contestants a unique opportunity to gain new knowledge and valuable experience necessary for scaling and developing projects, as well as make useful acquaintances.

Anyone can support the semi-finalists by voting for their favorite project by popular vote. It will be held on the tyvigre contest website.Russia from April 23 to April 30.

Applications for participation in the VI season of the "You're in the Game" contest were received from all over the country. Moscow (290), St. Petersburg (278) and Nizhny Novgorod Region (146) presented the most projects. The Krasnodar Territory (142) and the Chuvash Republic (138) also entered the top 5.

The most popular nominations were "Children in Sports" (1,414), "Starting Point" (1,381) and "Limitless Possibilities" (823). Football (340), martial arts (299), adaptive sports (265) and mass sports events (200) are the leaders among the topics. The application topics were not limited to these areas — as in previous seasons, the variety of ideas was huge.